


This is not how it ends

by tea_for_lupin



Category: Celtic Mythology, Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen, Shapeshifting, Taliesin - Freeform, cerridwen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2019204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_for_lupin/pseuds/tea_for_lupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's too much, too much; layers peeled back and confused and replaced, til his mind bends with knowledge like a sapling in a gale—</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is not how it ends

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt fill for hello-delicious-tea, who asked for 'Breathless, confused, bitter - Gwion'.

He knows, down to the cells between one vessel and the next, how oxygen burns inside him, lifting him up and setting him ablaze; his lungs are red with it, choking on air as bitter as smoke, and he cannot get enough. He flees in hare-form, burning, breathless; and the greyhound bitch behind him, teeth upon his heels.

There's too much, too much; layers peeled back and confused and replaced, til his mind bends with knowledge like a sapling in a gale—

—and he falls through time, through one blink and the next; the Hundred is drowning, Caer Wydyr fallen, water bearing down—

—he becomes a fish, a salmon; silver-scaled in sunlight, and the otter still behind him, and this is not how it ends—

—there's a harp in his hands and a hawk in the apple tree, bleeding, and this is not how it ends—

—another hawk behind him; feathers at his fingers now, heart hammering at air, and this is not how it ends, but all the wisdom in the world no longer matters, because fear is the fluid in his veins—

—he saved the hawk but he cannot save the king from his despair, cannot fall with him—

—he falls into the pile of wheat, one grain among many, swallowed and reborn, and this is not how it ends.


End file.
